Esther unconsciously put out her hand and grasped June’s arm; she would have given anything had it been possible to run away. She saw Mrs. Ashton turn and look towards where they were standing, and in another moment she had crossed the lounge and was shaking hands with June.

“I was just inviting Mr. Mellowes to come and dine with us,” she said. “But he tells me he already has an engagement.” Her eyes smiled at June. “I suppose you are the engagement?” she submitted.

June laughed.

A string band was playing a ragtime tune when they entered the restaurant. To Esther’s unaccustomed eyes the room with its flowers and many lights was the most wonderful place she had ever seen. She kept close to Micky as he threaded his way through the small tables till he found their own, rather at the end of the room and away from the noisy band.

He put Esther into a comfortable chair and himself took her cloak.

“You don’t mind being left while I go back for June?” he asked hurriedly; “she seems to have got lost.”

Esther looked after him as he went quickly back down the length of the room. She liked him in evening dress. If only it had been Raymond instead!––she stifled a little sigh; she meant to enjoy herself this evening; she was not going to allow one single despondent thought.

June and Micky rejoined her almost at once.

“I thought some one had eloped with you,” June said laughingly. “Where did you get to? Micky, how hot this room is––I’m just stifling!”

She threw off her wrap and snatched up a paper fan from the table. Micky sat down between the two girls.

“Miss Shepstone didn’t want to see Mrs. Ashton, I rather fancy,” he said coolly. He looked at Esther with a slight smile in his eyes. “I believe she was afraid Mrs. Ashton would demand a reason for having had her kind offer so cavalierly refused,” he went on banteringly.

Esther laughed.

“Yes, I believe I was,” she admitted. “I’m an awful coward over explaining things to people.”

“So am I,” said Micky drily. He was wondering how he was ever going to explain the most difficult occurrence of his whole life, and if, when he had done so, it would ever be believed.

He looked at Esther a great deal during dinner; he had never seen her so animated; her eyes were sparkling, and her cheeks were flushed; she talked a great deal, and was particularly friendly to him; he was quite sorry when it was time to go on to the theatre.

As they left the restaurant he noticed that she kept close to him again, and that she looked anxiously round for Mrs. Ashton.

“It’s all right,” he said. “She’s upstairs in the gallery.”

She smiled. She thought he was very quick to understand her. Raymond had never seemed to understand things without an explanation. She wished he had been rather more like Micky in some ways; she wished––she looked up at Micky guiltily; how could she compare the two men?––the one whom she loved, and the other whom she did not even like!

They were late, and the curtain had risen when they were shown into their seats. The theatre was dark, and Esther could hardly see her way. She put out her hand with a smothered laugh and felt for Micky’s. “I can’t see,” she said.

His fingers closed about hers; such a little hand it felt. He wondered why she was being so kind to him to-night. He did not realise that she was enjoying herself so much that she felt on good terms with the whole world.

Esther sat between him and June, and Micky hardly looked at the stage at all. His eyes turned again and again to her rapt face and the eagerness of her eyes.

She had been to theatres lots of times, so she told him in a whisper, but never in the stalls before. She asked him if he didn’t like some of the frocks worn by the people close by.

Micky’s eyes flashed.

“Not so well as yours,” he said.

She drew away from him a little, and he wished he had not said it. In that one moment he felt that he had broken down all the friendliness she had shown him that evening. She did not speak again for some time.

In the interval June leaned over to him.

“Are you bored, Micky? You look bored to death.”

Micky stifled a sigh.

“No,” he said rather wearily.

His eyes wandered round the crowded house. There were several people in the stalls whom he knew. He noticed that people were looking at Esther, and he felt a little thrill of pride.

They were wondering who she was, of course. He wished with all his heart that he could stand up in his seat and announce to an interested world that she was the woman he intended to marry.

When the light went down again Esther leaned a little closer to him.

“Mr. Mellowes–––” she said.

“Yes.” Micky bent his head towards her eagerly. He could hear her agitated breathing, hear too the little quiver in her voice when she spoke.

“Did you see who was in that box on the right?––the lower box.... I thought it was Mrs. Ashton.”

Micky answered casually that very likely it was.

“Odd, eh,” he said, “that we should dine at the same place and have tickets for the same show?”

Esther said “Yes––yes” twice in nervous hurry.

There was something strained and unnatural about her, 172 and though Micky could not see her face clearly he knew that something had happened to distress her.

“What is it?” he asked anxiously. “Is anything the matter?”

She shook her head.

“No.... No.”

She sat very still till the curtain fell again, but Micky had the feeling that she was not paying the least attention to what was going on on the stage, and he knew that her eyes turned again and again to the stage box. What was she afraid of, he asked himself in perplexity, even if Mrs. Ashton did see her and recognize her, surely––then in a flash he knew ... the light had been turned up suddenly, and in that moment he saw the figure of a man move quickly from the front of the box to the screen of the curtains.

Micky gripped the arms of his seat; for the moment he could not move.

It was Raymond––he knew it as certainly as if he had been told.

No doubt he had seen Esther, whilst she ... poor child! Had she seen him too?

He looked down at her; she was sitting up stiffly, her hands clasped in the lap of the new frock of which she had been so innocently proud; her face was as white as the soft tulle of her sleeves, and her eyes were fixed on the box with its velvet curtains where Mrs. Ashton sat laughing and chatting with a girl in a pink frock.

They both turned from time to time to some one who stood behind them in the shadow; once the curtains moved a little and a man’s hand and arm showed distinctly.

Micky could bear it no longer; he touched Esther’s clasped hands.

“Are you ill?––would you like me to take you out?”

But she shook her head.

“No, no ... please leave me alone.”

June had discovered a friend in a seat a row or two 173 ahead with whom she was trying to carry on a conversation; she had no eyes for Micky or Esther. Micky gave a sigh of relief when the lights were lowered again; he could feel all that Esther was suffering, he could put himself in her place so thoroughly.

If he went round to the box and made sure if it were Ashton, perhaps that would be the best way; he could manage to give him the tip then to keep out of the way. He half rose in his seat, but Esther moved at once, laying her fingers on his arm.

“Oh, don’t go––don’t leave me here,” she said tremulously.

It was not the man himself she wanted, but his presence somehow gave her a feeling of confidence; if, indeed, it was Raymond up there in the box. She tried to argue herself out of the fancy; he would have let her know if he had come to London––surely she would have been the first to whom he would have come; she was mad to ever think the man up there in the background could be Raymond.

But the conviction was there in her mind.

“It is he––I know it’s he,” something in her heart was saying over and over again obstinately.

The rest of the play seemed endless; she rose with a quick breath of thankfulness when it was over.

“You are in a hurry,” June said. “Haven’t you enjoyed it?”

“Yes, oh yes, but it’s hot––I want to get out.”

Micky was deliberately being as slow as he could––he blocked the way out obstinately; the stalls were almost empty when at last they left them.

June touched his arm.

“Micky––is––Esther ill? Look how white she is.”

Esther was some little way ahead of them; she seemed to be trying to get out as quickly as possible.

“It’s too hot for her, poor darling!” June said. “Micky–––”

Micky laughed savagely.

“It’s not that,” he said, “but Ashton was up in that box with his mother, and she saw him.”

“Micky–––” He silenced her with a frown. He followed Esther as quickly as he could, but she was outside in the cold night air before he overtook her. There was a crowd here too––rows of cars and carriages outside, and women in thin evening frocks and furs shivering in the cold wind.

Micky drew Esther’s hand through his arm.

“We shall find our cab this way, I think,” he said evenly.

He had seen Mrs. Ashton only a few yards away, and he dreaded every moment that Esther would see her, and see, too, who was with her.

A sudden block in the crowd momentarily hindered them, and in that second a man’s light laugh rang out above the noise and chatter of voices.

Micky felt the girl beside him give a convulsive start. She tried to drag her fingers from his, but he held them fast.

The crowd was moving again now; a second, and Raymond and his mother were lost to sight.

Micky had slipped an arm round Esther; he was white to the lips. He knew now how near he had been to discovery and the wreck of all his hopes. He tried to pretend that he did not understand the cause of her agitation. He looked down at her.

“Better now you’re in the air?” he asked. “It was hot in the theatre. I––Esther–––”

She had swung heavily against him, and looking down in sudden alarm, Micky saw that she had fainted.